


Aftershocks

by s0norus



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Crying, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Steve Rogers, M/M, Men Crying, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Possibly Unrequited Love, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-08 21:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14702331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s0norus/pseuds/s0norus
Summary: It wasn’t like when he fell from the train. There was no screaming. No look of anguish and fear as Bucky faded from sight. No moment where Steve almost had him. No defiant screech of metal to signal that Steve was running out of time.This time Bucky Barnes goes out with a whisper. He dies with the silence and peace of a breeze on a quiet day. He fades out of existence so subtly Steve doesn’t even believe it really happens, his eyes must be tricking him, Thanos is playing games with his mind because there is no goddamn fucking way that Steve just lost Buckyagain. That simply isn’t possible.





	Aftershocks

**Author's Note:**

> so um...hi there everyone...
> 
> im so sorry ive basically abandoned this platform for the last like six months, i got really caught up with college and other life shit and ive had the worst writer's block Ever so...yeah...
> 
> i swear im gonna update Things You Said (if this is the first work of mine you're reading, consider checking [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12784233/chapters/29171634) out bc i promise it's a lot fucking happier than this lmao) very soon, i just need to figure out the direction i wanna go to get the ending i want!
> 
> this fic is the product of me seeing infinity war and being sad as fuck and needed to word-vomit my angst, so we're gonna acknowledge this fic and then we're gonna pretend infinity war never fucking happened and move on, ok? ok.
> 
> enjoy!

_“Steve?”_

That’s it. That’s all Steve got. That’s all there was time for. 

He turned around and then... _poof_. In an instant, if Steve blinked he wouldn’t have seen it, Bucky was gone. Again. 

It wasn’t like when he fell from the train. There was no screaming. No look of anguish and fear as Bucky faded from sight. No moment where Steve almost had him. No defiant screech of metal to signal that Steve was running out of time. 

This time Bucky Barnes goes out with a whisper. He dies with the silence and peace of a breeze on a quiet day. He fades out of existence so subtly Steve doesn’t even believe it really happens, his eyes must be tricking him, Thanos is playing games with his mind because there is no goddamn fucking way that Steve just lost Bucky _again_. That simply isn’t possible. 

Steve ambles over to the spot where Bucky was and stares at it, stooping down and reaching a tentative hand toward the ground. His fingers brush against something soft, something not natural to a forest floor, and he brings them back to his face to examine them. A dark substance coats the pads of his fingers, something akin to ash but also definitely not ash at all. He looks back at Thor helplessly, and his friend only stares back, just as scared and paralyzed as he is at this moment. Steve’s eyes wander back to his fingers. This...this can’t be all that’s left of Bucky...it just can’t be…

He can’t be gone. He isn’t. He’s still fighting somewhere on the battlefield, or maybe he’s paused to watch in horror while other people evaporate; hell, maybe he and Sam are off somewhere actually being civil toward one another. He was hallucinating, hearing things. Bucky was never behind him to begin with, Steve’s so ramped up on adrenaline and exhausted that he _thinks_ he saw Bucky there. He _thinks_ he heard Bucky behind him. It all happened so quickly, he could’ve easily mistaken something or someone else for Bucky, right? He’s going to emerge from the trees any second now, Steve is sure of it. He’ll probably be hurt from the battle, but he’s started to get his spirit back, so he’ll look at Steve with that smile he hasn’t seen in so fucking long and that made his heart beat a little bit faster, and he’ll stumble over to his side and he’ll slap Steve on the back heartily and make a joke, because Bucky _jokes_ now. The man Steve knew in the forties is starting to come back to him, slowly but surely, and he was so fucking excited and _Bucky isn’t fucking dead, not again, not this time, please_. 

His ears begin to ring, and he starts to lose all sensation in his body. He’s aware of the things going on around him - he sees Wanda dissolve, and particles of her float away on the wind into nothingness, leaving Vision motionless and grey on the ground; he can see Natasha and others filing in around him and staring out at Wakanda in shocked reticence - but it’s almost as if his mind has left his body completely. He’s numb, and he _knows_ this numbness. He’s felt it before. It is not a comfort, because this numbness only serves to stave off the unbearable pain he knows will soon follow, he knows will hit him like a fucking freight train, but for now, his body doesn’t know how to process what just happened so it’s shutting down completely. 

A long silence passes where he, Natasha, Thor, Bruce, and Rhodes all remain in the forest together. At one point, Steve ends up on the ground, and he turns Vision’s body over on its back. The ugly, gaping hole in his forehead that once held the Mind Stone peers out at them all and Vision’s cold white eyes stare blankly at the world. 

“...Oh, God…” The voice is Steve’s, but he isn’t aware of his mouth moving in the slightest. 

“Rogers,” Rhodes says hesitantly. Steve acknowledges him, having to tilt his head up slightly in order for their eyes to meet, and when he sees Rhodes’ apologetic expression, something heavy settles in the pit of his stomach. _No...no, no, no…_

“I...I can’t find Sam,” Rhodes admits, and he doesn’t have to spell it out for Steve for him to understand exactly what that means. He’s gone, too...no, not “too”...not too, goddammit, because Bucky isn’t _gone_...he’s not...

“Steve…” A firm hand settles on his shoulder, and when he follows the arm its attached to, he’s looking up into Natasha’s battered face. Her eyes search his in concern because she _knows_ , Natasha knows, of course she does, because Steve has told her outright. Who else would he have told about it, about Bucky, about _him_ and Bucky? It’s not like she needed to be told, really, because Natasha Romanoff is not a stupid or oblivious woman by any means, and she’s seen Steve go through hell and high water in order to protect Bucky from anything and everything that wanted to cause him harm, but the fact that she knows other things, things that happened when they were kids, when they were teenagers, when they were men in the army…

“Where’s Barnes?” she asks. 

_“Steve?”_

“I…” He wants to say “I don’t know”. He wants to pretend, for just a minute longer, that Bucky’s going to come traipsing through the brush any second now, in the outfit that was just an upgraded, modernized version of his Howling Commandos one, the one that nearly made Steve fucking _pass out_ when he saw it initially. But he knows he can’t lie to Natasha. She has this way of seeing right through him no matter what. But if he says it out loud, it’s going to become _real_ , it won’t be something he can brush off as a fucked up figment of his imagination anymore, so he presses his lips together and shakily gets to his feet. 

“I...I gotta...I have to go,” he mutters, and his legs are carrying him away from the group still staring in horror and disbelief out at the landscape before them before Natasha can even try to convince him to stay. He staggers past the spot where Bucky’s gun is still laying, forgotten. The metal glints at him coldly as he stumbles away from it, and he’s violently reminded of the gleam of Bucky’s arm at that moment, and _oh fuck_ he’s going to throw up. 

Steve breaks into a dead sprint without even meaning to. He doesn’t know where he’s going, how far into the forest he’s heading, or even if he’s running into more danger, but he doesn’t care. He just has to get away. Maybe if he picks up enough speed he’ll be able to run away from the pain that’s beginning to settle in his chest, or from the sick feeling bubbling in his gut. He won’t know unless he tries, so he fucking _tries_. Tree branches snap back at him as he barrels through them and cut at his face and arms, but he can barely even feel them. 

His foot catches on the warped root of a tree that he hadn’t seen, and it sends him plummeting headfirst into the ground. He lands in the dirt with a solid thud and actually skids forward a few feet, ending up beneath a thick, old-looking tree that looms unhindered above him. He carefully pushes himself up into a kneeling position and digs his fingers into the trunk of the tree so he can attempt to pull himself off the ground again, but his knees decide to buckle just as he’s gotten his footing back. He sinks back down to the dirt in defeat, nails drilling so hard into the rough bark he can feel splinters getting lodged underneath the free edges but he doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. 

It isn’t fair...it isn’t fucking fair...he feels like such a child, lamenting about how it “isn’t fair”, because life isn’t fair, but Jesus fucking Christ this just isn’t _fair_. They hadn’t gotten any time together. There was so much going on and everyone was so busy preparing for Thanos to arrive, and trying to squirrel Vision away until Shuri could finish reworking the Mind Stone, that there was no time for Steve to pull Bucky aside to talk about…

He turns so he’s leaning limply against the tree’s trunk and stares up at the sky, breathing heavily, from the sprinting or the pain slowly enveloping every nerve in his body he doesn’t know. What would they have even talked about? Was there anything to discuss at all? Did Bucky remember? Steve realizes that he doesn’t know for certain, because between the time he’d discovered Bucky was the Winter Soldier and now, they’d hardly gotten a moment to themselves. They were always fighting some new threat (or each other), running away from something, surrounded by various men in different uniforms who wanted to lock them both up, and just when the dust had begun to settle just a little bit, Bucky went back into cryo. And since Steve simply can’t help himself, because he can’t sit still and let the world spin on its own, he had to go out and find more fights to pick. 

But he thought Bucky remembered _something_. He had to’ve. When they spoke, in the too brief moments just before another battle broke out where they could be alone together, there was something familiar in the way Bucky looked at him. His eyes glinted in a way that made Steve feel like a scrawny, asthmatic twenty-something again. His smile was the same one he’d only reserve for Steve, the one he’d never allow anyone else to see. 

Steve blinks a few times and realizes that his face is wet. He scrubs the back of his glove over his cheek, smearing more dirt and blood on his face, and squeezes his eyes shut tight. He wasn’t even aware of the fact that he’d started crying, but now he can’t stop, the tears are flowing freely down his cheeks and he can’t stop them. His chest is heavy and aches, like someone had set a two-ton weight on it and then left him to figure out what to do with it. 

He wishes he’d hugged Bucky longer on the tarmac. He wishes he’d said something to Sam before the battle broke out, that he got to at least see him instead of hearing from Rhodes that he was gone. He wishes he would evaporate into ash, now, just like Bucky, just like Wanda, just like billions upon trillions of others currently disintegrating into nothingness. That way, at least, he doesn’t have to feel the way he’s feeling. He doesn’t have to mourn Bucky for the second time after just getting him back. He doesn’t have to mourn Sam who was only in this, in this huge mess of a fight, because of him. He doesn’t have to mourn Wanda who was just a fucking _kid_ and had already had enough heartbreak to last her two lifetimes. How many others will he find out he has to mourn? 

_“Steve?”_

It hurts. It hurts so fucking much. Everything hurts so much, it’s unbearable, it’s all going to crush him any second now. He weeps, silently, alone, staring up at the sky and praying that this is a dream. All of it. He wouldn’t mind if right now, this very second, he woke up back in his and Bucky’s apartment in Brooklyn, and it was the 1930s again, and he was still every bit as sick and thin and gangly as he had been his whole life.


End file.
